Remnants

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Remnants)

Mixed feelings on this one. If McKay was being manipulated as well, why couldn't he see 'Vanessa' when both Wolsey and Sheppard could? That didn't make sense just so they could reveal with a twinkle at the end that Zelenka was the one helping him. Other than that I was mostly into it. It rests on the idea that you believe in evolution as a way for sentient life to come into existence, which I don't, so although it was a good moral issue whether to allow life to spring from the seed pod, or to harvest the data themselves at the cost of the genetic material, I wasn't very sympathetic to their idea. Then there was the unexpected addition of the Genii, and specifically Kolya... I was never fond of this race, neither did I much care for Kolya, an early attempt at giving the series a somewhat recurring villain. But in a way I felt it was justified to bring back Robert Davi since he was fairly integral to the early seasons. So... I'm not sure on that count. It wasn't until he actually chopped off Sheppard's hand that I realised this couldn't be happening. This isn't the kind of series where a main character gets seriously maimed, and while we are coming to the end of it, so all bets should be off, and there's always alien technology that can fix even hand/arm separation, there was something fishy about Kolya showing up out of the blue like this. It was also suspicious that the two scientists who were in the story to begin with suddenly had no part to play and it was entirely from Sheppard's perspective after being knocked unconscious. That always smacks of alien manipulation to me.

Obviously there's the parallel story of Wolsey simultaneously having to deal with a performance review (led by Tamlyn Tomita - that woman is in absolutely everything!), and meeting a mysterious lady who is his ideal, again out of the blue. Not that I made the connection at first, I assumed she really was what she seemed, especially as she was cunningly introduced before McKay even found the device in the ocean. So it was a cleverly designed puzzle, I'll give them that. It was fitting that Wolsey should get a story, and it was different to have three individual plots, and certainly kept the story spinning, suspicions not having time to come to rest. Until that is the hand situation occurred. They wouldn't bring back Kolya just like that, why would he be on the planet Atlantis is on, and didn't he die? Yes, he did die, as Sheppard mentions. Even Zelenka complimenting Rodney was suspicious, though I wasn't sure if we were supposed to think he was real or just that he could have been a mental manipulation, at first. And with a title like 'Remnants' it suggests it's going to be about some kind of alien group that survives somehow. You don't need to have seen as much sci-fi as I have to realise it all added up to this mysterious device that was giving off something that could affect people's minds.

You could say that ultimately it was a nuts and bolts mystery, and I did find myself missing the other characters, with Teyla, Ronon and Keller only getting minimal interaction. I always enjoy a character that only appears to one person and which no one else can see, and I welcomed seeing Wolsey in a vulnerable situation. He may have surprised his IOC paymasters back on Earth by not towing the company line, but he's surprised me in how amenable he's been. To some degree I wish we'd seen a tougher arc so that he didn't come around quite so easily and was butting heads more seriously during the season. He's had his differences, but he's never been the Wolsey of old, always ready to shut the programme down or whatever, so he has rather lost his bite, sadly. On the other side he's been a nicer character to watch, so it's a difficult line to come down on whether he was a success. It was certainly an unexpected and bold move, and I'm always for Robert Picardo being in things, it's just that I'm not sure how I'd be writing the character's performance review myself. There always has to be the moment their position is questioned, and since we're coming to the end anyway they can't exactly make much of a threat on whether a character will remain in charge or not, but they had to deal with it at some point.

I can say it's not a bad sci-fi story, and after the heavy previous episode dealing with Michael, it was an ideal change of pace. These are the kind of episodes I usually enjoy best, just messing about with the characters, playing some sci-fi trick on them to see how they react and perhaps learning something about them. But there was too much solitariness, I think, as we come to the last few episodes, and I want to see the team doing things together before it's too late. I'm not saying it was a waste of a slot, by no means, but adding up all the niggles, and the fact it didn't surprise me, despite being a poetic solution with the little flourish at the end confirming Zelenka was never there, I'd have to say it didn't quite pass its performance review, though it was ever so close. I hope they really excel with the last few stories, and it's not that I didn't like this one, just felt it didn't quite get there. Maybe I'm being too harsh and will reevaluate it when I see it again, but for now it's a 'not bad' and 'getting there' from me.

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